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Every day we provide you with Six Incredible Things Before Breakfast to nibble away at. Here you can fill your brain with the most intellectually stimulating “amuse bouches” from the past week – a veritable smorgasbord for the cranium. They’re all here for you to load up your plate – this week’s “Morsels for the mind”. Enjoy! If you do nothing else, make sure to check out the “Reads / views / listens of the week”. **** Feather, fur &... Read more

Welcome to the SCICOMM 25! This is where I pull together the week's 25 most talked about science communication stories, determined by the engagement rate of stories I've shared on Twitter. Many are written by the world's leading science communicators. Some offer tips and advice, while others tackle important issues we need to discuss and debate. All of them are worth checking out. I hope you enjoy this week's list. Top Stories: Is a loss of trust in science, creating a vicious... Read more

Serious question: has the peer review system at the PLOS journals been doing a less-than-stellar job when it comes to evaluating complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research for publication? If the answer is 'yes', why? Or if 'no', how does a paper like this go through PLOS ONE without some serious revisions? I refer to the systematic review and meta-analysis on effectiveness of acupuncture for essential hypertension, done by a group of researchers from the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese... Read more

"The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize. What matters here is the framework— or the procedure— rather than the outcome or the substance. Limits and constraints, in other words, can be productive— even if the entire conceit of "the Internet" suggests otherwise. Evgeny Morozov in "To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism" We cherish privacy in health matters... Read more

Think about it for a second... How many different ways do you describe science communication in an ordinary day? In the morning you may call it outreach, around at lunchtime you reference engagement, and by the end of the day you’re having a heated discussion about widening participation or sharing knowledge. It can certainly be confusing... I came across this interesting paper which offers some definitions that may serve as a starting point for a broader discussion. What’s in a... Read more

“It’s very difficult to observe polar bears directly in their environment.” “They travel widely,” George Durner, research zoologist with the United States Geological Survey Alaska Science Center, explained the bears travel “Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in the course of the year across the sea ice environment.” To enter the polar bear world Durner and other scientists use small aircraft, particularly helicopters, to fly over the sea ice off Alaska’s coast. Bears are located, tranquilized, and given temporary collars... Read more

Yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings made the case that federal investment in scientific research was essential for middle class Americans. This was at the 6th forum held as part of the Middle Class Prosperity Project. The forum, called Why Federal Investments in Science and Innovation Matter received insight from economist Dr. Mariano Mazzucato, pharmacoeconomist Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, computer engineer and entrepreneur Dr. Carol Epsy-Wilson, as well as science’s favorite champion of recent days, former Speaker of the... Read more

A quick note today via a friend, Dr. Prateek Buch, the Policy Director of Evidence Matters. Do you know someone who has promoted sound science and evidence? Nominate them for the 2015 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science. The John Maddox Prize rewards an individual who has promoted sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest. Its emphasis is on those who have faced difficulty or hostility in doing so. Do you know someone who stands... Read more

Only last year, the Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the navigation system in the brain – in the form of grid cells in the entorhinal cortex – and they have already come up with their next discovery: so-called speed cells. May-Britt and Edvard Moser, Copyright: Geir Mogen, NTNU, CC BY-NC 2.0 So what’s it all about? The speed cells, which were located in tests on rats, continuously fire signals during... Read more

[Note: This web-page is being updated continuously: current status: 27.07.15] LOCATION and TIME: Observatoire de Strasbourg, Sept. 21st - 25th 2015 Below are provided 1.Background/Motivation, 2.How to register, 3.PARTICIPANTS, 4.HOTELS, 5.PROGRAMME ORGANISERS: Benoit Famaey (Strasbourg) and Pavel Kroupa (Bonn) 1.BACKGROUND / MOTIVATION: Galaxy-scale data seem to be in accordance with the hypothesis that the extrapolation of Newtonian gravitation by orders of magnitude below the Solar system space-time curvature breaks down completely, and that collisionless astronomical systems behave according to space-time... Read more

Fun Facts to go with this video: The main 7 characteristics that are commonly recognized by the scientific community as being the requirements for being considered 'alive' Homeostasis: The ability to regulate one's internal environment Organization: Being composed of one or more cells Metabolism: Taking energy in one form and turning it into energy in another form Growth: Increasing in size Adaptation: Being bale to change over time in response to the surrounding situation Response to stimuli (this one is... Read more

I read with a great deal of interest a report on Vox by their science and health reporter Julia Belluz (@juliaoftoronto on Twitter) on the recently publicized story of Pandemrix, an H1N1 pandemic influenza (a.k.a. "Swine Flu") vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the condition of narcolepsy (a debilitating sleep disorder) that affected a small fraction of individuals who received this vaccine. The facts of the story are not in dispute. During the 2009-10 Swine Flu pandemic in Europe, GSK's... Read more

SUMMARY: Books, books, beautiful books! This is a list of biology, ecology, environment, natural history and animal books that are (or will soon be) available to occupy your bookshelves and your thoughts. “Words in leather and wood”. Bookshelves in the “Long Room” at the old Trinity College Library in Dublin. Image: Nic McPhee from Morris, MN, USA. 2007. (Creative Commons.) Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them!... Read more

Every day we provide you with Six Incredible Things Before Breakfast to nibble away at. Here you can fill your brain with the most intellectually stimulating “amuse bouches” from the past week – a veritable smorgasbord for the cranium. They’re all here for you to load up your plate – this week’s “Morsels for the mind”. Enjoy! If you do nothing else, make sure to check out the “Reads / views / listens of the week”. **** Feather, fur &... Read more

I love dogs. I grew up in households with dogs, and feel very comfortable around most dogs. And they seem to return the feeling. This has happened not only with familiar pets in the households of friends and family, but also with strange, unfamiliar dogs under otherwise trying circumstances. Through my childhood and young adulthood, I lived in an enclosed residential area which happened to serve as a sort of shelter for many random stray or abandoned, ill-nourished and emaciated street-dogs... Read more